Tim Uppal, the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, just announced via Twitter that
the government plans
to introduce legislation repealing sections of the Election Act that
create a ban on communicating election results before all polls have
closed across the country. The change reflects the reality of modern
communications tools, which render such bans outdated and virtually
impossible to enforce.
I served as an expert witness in the most recent challenge to the
rules, launched last year by Bell Media and the CBC. My conclusion:
In 2005, Internet communication tools
such as instant messaging and email did not have widespread, instant
broadcast capabilities such that a communication ban appeared feasible.
Given the current popularity of social media tools that did not exist
at the time, a similar ban today is simply not possible without
inflicting enormous harm to freedom of expression and public confidence
in the election system.
Today's announcement recognizes those harms and rightly removes the
restrictions. When the Supreme Court last examined the issue in 2007,
Justice Rosalie Abella wrote
the dissent
(arguing that the evidence in favour of a ban did not justify the limit
on freedom of expression). In support, she quoted a former Reform MP
from 1996:
It is important to realize, and
anybody who looks at the transcripts of the committee will see that no
convincing evidence was provided to the committee that this is creating
a serious problem in the functioning of our democracy. . . I asked the
various witnesses whether there was any documented evidence or any
serious academic study on whether knowing the results in other parts of
the country had either of two effects: caused people not to vote or it
caused them to vote differently than they would vote otherwise.
There
is precious little evidence that either of these things are true.
The MP was Stephen Harper.
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The New Yorker examines
the entry of James Joyce's works into the public domain in Europe
(Joyce entered the public domain in Canada twenty years ago),
demonstrating why the issue is about far more than free access to books.
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Sarah Schmidt of Postmedia reports
that net neutrality complaints to the CRTC have accelerated over the
past six months.
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Author Joe Konrath, who is earning $3,500 per day from selling e-books
on Amazon, highlights
the benefits of self-publishing.
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